Women
produce 80% of all food in sub-Saharan Africa.
Yet men receive 90% of credit extended to small
farmers.

In
rural Tanzania, women spend, on average, five
hours a day walking to perform chores.

Italy
has the highest percentage of women managers
and administrators, with 54%.

Estonia
has the highest proportion of women in professional
and technical positions, with 67.5%.

Tanzanian
and Vietnamese women who work in nonagricultural
jobs are closest to pay equity than any other
women in the world. They make more than 90%
of male wages.

Graham
crackers were invented in 1829 by clergyman
Sylvester Graham, who believed that they, along
with a vegetarian diet, cold baths, and fresh
air, could curb young men's urge to masturbate.

The
American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality
from its list of mental disorders in 1980. The
World Health Organization didn't stop listing
it as an illness in the International Classification
of Diseases until 1993.

Seventy-one
percent of U.S. women are likely to have an
annual checkup, while only 52% of men are likely
to do the same.

>>silver
belles

The
average Japanese woman lives to be 83 years
old, which is the longest average life span
in the world.

Women
make up 72% of the U.S. population age 85 and
older. As much as half of this group has Alzheimer's
disease.

>>something
old, something new

In
the nineteenth century, if two women shared
a household the arrangement was called a "Boston
marriage." *
No country allows same-sex couples
the full privileges of marriage. However, seven
countries have created a new marital status--registered
partnership--that confers most of the benefits
of marriage. Denmark was the first, in 1989,
followed by Norway, Greenland, Sweden, Iceland,
the Netherlands, and Finland.*
The average Swedish woman marries at age 29.
The average Yemenite woman marries at 16.

Major
Sources: American
Psychiatric Association; Central Statistical Organization,
Yemen; Council of Europe; Encyclopaedia Britannica;
The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex (Cleis Press,
1994); International Labour Office; Journal of
the American Medical Women's Association; Lambda
Legal Defense and Education Fund; National Conference
of State Legislatures; Parade Publications; United
Nations; World Health Organization